Canon SD850 battery life

The SD850 has pretty good battery life - I took 327 shots on my first fully charged battery. The LCD was turned off for maybe a 3rd of those pictures, and the flash was almost never used, but I did review my pictures after taking them quite a bit.

Unfortunately, the camera doesn't have a battery charge meter, so the end of battery comes with little warning. Once the low-battery warning came on I got about 20 pictures before the camera turned off. It takes about 2 hours to charge the battery, which is done by taking the battery out and putting it into a relatively compact (slightly smaller than the camera) wall charger.

view your photos at full resolution

If you have a >2 megapixel camera, it's likely that you never view your photos at full resolution, since even a 2mp image is larger than what most monitors can show. While full resolution may be out of reach, it's still possible that you can see more pixels than you do currently. If you have a CRT, it's very likely that you don't push it to the very highest resolution, as Windows just isn't usable (fonts are too small, as are toolbars, etc). And even some LCD users run in less than full resolution mode, for the same reason.

What you'd like to do is temporarily switch to a higher resolution mode while viewing your photos. You can do this by changing your desktop settings, but it's a pain to switch back and forth all the time. Luckily, there's an app that will do the work for you. Reso will change the screen resolution (and/or refresh rate) and then launch an application of your choosing. Once you quit that application it will return your screen to normal.

Use it to start Infranview and you have a high resolution image viewer. You can even place a shortcut on your desktop that does this, and then you can just drag any photo onto it to view the image in full resolution. You'll be amazed how much more your photo's "pop" when viewed at 1600x1200 or higher. This is one of the reasons to hang on to a good 19 or 21in CRT.

See also: this writeup.

further comparisons between canon sd850is and sony w80

Nightshots: both Ok, but sd850 is better.

http://www.dcresource.com/reviews/sony/dsc_w80-review/nightshot.jpg
http://www.dcresource.com/reviews/canon/powershot_sd850-review/nightshot.jpg

Lens:

(lab shot) S850 has more corner blur. W80 has more barrel distortion. Both are OK.
(real world) both suffer corner blur, but in different corners. SD850 is only slightly worse.
http://www.dcresource.com/reviews/sony/dsc_w80-review/DSC00016.JPG
http://www.dcresource.com/reviews/canon/powershot_sd850-review/IMG_0014.JPG

High ISO mode:
(iso 400): w80 is blurrier, but not so that you'd notice at 1280x1024. At 100% zoom it's definitely noticeable, and at 50% zoom it also is, but not badly. Conclusion: it's a toss-up if you don't use the full camera resolution.

Real world resolution:

not much difference in full light, esp. if you don't use full resolution.
http://www.dcresource.com/reviews/sony/dsc_w80-review/DSC00018.JPG
http://www.dcresource.com/reviews/canon/powershot_sd850-review/IMG_0019.JPG

in moderate light, there still doesn't seem to be much difference.

Non-photographic issues:

CIPA: W80 340 shots, SD850 230 shots
Dimensions: W80 3.6 x 2.3 x 0.9 in., SD850 3.6 x 2.2 x 1.0 in. (W80 slightly smaller)
Rotation sensor: Yes, both have it.

SD850is price drops

Amazon is still dropping the price on the SD850is ($250), though the price fluctuates up and down a bit. They remain the cheapest price on the net from a reputable seller. Meanwhile the Sony W80 is going for $180.

Casio EX-V7

I'm taking a break from Canon to consider other cameras. The Casio Casio EX-V7 is a nice compact camera if you don't care about an optical viewfinder ($200)

Specs: 7x zoom, 7mp, 2.5in LCD, optical NR, CIPA 240. Dimensions: 3.8 x 2.4 x 1.0 in (0.2 longer and taller than the Canon SD 850).

The 7x zoom is pretty exciting. That kind of range implies some optical trade offs, and indeed there are some: corner blurriness and barrel distortion at wide angles. The corner blurriness isn't so bad, actually, but the barrel distortion is pretty noticeable in lab tests.

It also has a really good movie mode: it allows optical zooming while recording movies, and it records to h264, which is a really efficient codec with small file size and good playback compatibility.

Some reviews:

http://www.kenrockwell.com/casio/ex-v7.htm
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/CasioEXV7/

Near bottom for SD850is prices

Amazon's price on the SD850is is starting to climb instead of drop. it is now $260. I'd guess this means stock is drying up, so it's probably time to buy this camera if you are interested. The next bump up (The SD950is) is going for $350. Given that shipping is free, these prices are actually about as low as they get online from reputable sellers. It's been a little while since Canon has announced a new SD camera, so if you wait another 3 months I expect some new choices will be out.

In the mean time, the Sony W80 remains a good alternative at $190 (again, free shipping).

Canon SD 870IS

The Canon Powershot SD870IS (3.8x zoom, 8 MP, IS,Wide angle, CIPA 270) sounds like an upgrade to the SD850. Not true! It uses a wide-angle lens, removes the optical view finder, and bumps the LCD up to 3in from 2.5in. It's also slightly taller and longer (by .1in, in each direction). Because of the new control layout there isn't any good place to rest your thumb on the back of the camera - the entire backside is made up of LCD or buttons. The shots per charge of 270 isn't bad, but since you have to use the LCD all the time, there's no way to extend that value should you be on vacation, etc. Shot to shot cycle time was 2.2s.

I've noted this camera before, but now there are two good reviews of it online.

http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/SD850IS/SD850ISA.HTM

A good, spec oriented review. As you might expect, the wide angle lens, at the widest angle, produces a bit of blurriness at the corners, and visible barrel distortion. The 870 is definitely worse than the SD850 in this regard, but about the same as it's wide-angle predecessor, the SD800. In real world images (1) (2), this may or may not be visible, depending on how hard you look.

Aside from the lens, the reviewer liked the camera quite well.

http://www.dcresource.com/reviews/canon/powershot_sd870-review/index.shtml

A really informative review, with excellent real world tests. This reviewer also liked the camera a lot, but was less satisfied with the quality of the optics.

Personally, it looks like a fine camera, but not a great one - I want better optics and a viewfinder (or much better battery life, to make up for the missing viewfinder).

Vectorize images

A neat new web app allows you to take your photos and create vector art out of them automatically. Vector based images are composed of lines and polygons, rather than pixels, which potentially means that you can print or resize the images with less error. In practice, I've not found that to be true with the output of this app. But - it's fun to play with.


http://vectormagic.stanford.edu/

New version of the GIMP (2.40)

The GIMP is a powerful photo editing program - equal to PhotoShop, more or less, but with a different interface. There is a new version out, which adds some nice features (see link below), and a new visual theme. If you don't have PhotoShop, get the GIMP!


http://www.gimp.org/release-notes/gimp-2.4.html

Canon PowerShot SD870 review

The newest PowerShot in Canon's super-compact line is the SD870is. Unlike most of the SD line, it doesn't have a optical viewfinder. It's sized about the same as the SD850is, and has a 3.8x zoom lens. It's rated at 270 shots (CIPA), which is not so great given that there's no optical viewfinder, so you can't use the camera without the LCD on. The price is $309 from amazon.

Picture quality looks pretty good - if anything the corner blurriness is less on this camera than previous Powershots, though I have yet to do a detailed comparison.

DP Review - positive review, some spec oriented tests and real-world pictures.

Further price drop on SD 850IS

Amazon now has it for $264, or $234 if you sign up for a credit card.

Canon Powershot A570 IS

The A570IS is a slightly larger camera that uses AAs, and has a very low price ($165 at amazon). It's bigger than the Powershot 850IS, at 3.52 x 2.53 x 1.69 in (most notably 0.7in thicker).

The specs:

CIPA: 400 shots using 2 AA NiMH batteries (900 with LCD off).

4x zoom lens, noticeable barrel distortion at wide angle, but only very minimal corner blurring.

2.5" LCD, 115k pixels, and a optical viewfinder as well.

The light sensitively looks pretty good, with relatively low-noise images up to iso 400, and very little noise reduction applied, which means that decent detail is seen even at iso 400.

Optical image stabilization, which DP review says works quite well.

Conclusion:

Not compact enough for me, but if that's not so important to you this sounds like an excellent bargain.

Positive review at dp review, with lots of good spec oriented tests.

New review for Sony W80

The W80 has been around a while, but DP review (one of the best spec-oriented sites) just posted their review. They note several problems:

Battery life didn't hold up to the CIPA rating of 340 shots per charge - they found it was closer to 200 shots. They were unimpressed with image stabilization (in general, not just with this camera. I think this is rather unfair, and I'm not sure where they are coming from). They also complain about the over-noise reduction that the camera applies above ISO 100 (but as I've said, this is less of an issue if you shoot at 5 MP). They also note the corner blur issue. Most damming to them, however, is that indoor performance is quite poor - the ISO goes too high, and focus is very slow.

Interestingly, they have a side by side comparison page with the Canon SD800, much like I've been doing with the SD850. To my eyes, the W80 won.

Amazon price drop again

Canon SD850 $282
Sony W80 $199

At this rate the price is dropping every couple days.

Best price on the SD 850IS

Amazon has dropped the price to $286, and seems to be dropping the price at roughly $10/week. Likely they will sell out and quit carrying the camera. Note: amazon is also running a $30 off bonus if you sign up for a "small business" credit card - not sure what the requirements are to qualify, but if you do the price is only $256!

Best deal on the Sony w80

Currently the best deal on the Sony w80 is $200, direct from sony, if you are willing to sign up for a credit card in the processes. Just put the $220 camera in the shopping cart, and another $80 in accessories (such as a big memory card) and go thru the checkout process. At the point they want to you enter your name and address they will offer you a credit card signup that will give you $100 off. If you don't like credit card shenanigans, then amazon has it for $210. But then you won't get $80 worth of accessories...

canon sd850 vs sony w80: revisted

People have complained about the soft looking images that the Sony w80 puts out, likely due to high noise reduction in the camera. Nobody has really made the same complaint about the SD850. So just out of curiosity, I decided to do a little A/B testing on test photos taken in good lighting from Digital Imaging's website. Though test shots did look different, the difference was pretty minimal.

Furthermore, these test shots were taken at 7+ megapixels, whereas I have previously argued that 4 mega pixels all that's really needed. If you resize the images down to 4 megapixels, I found they looked even sharper (unsurprising), and that there was even less evidence that the Sony camera was soft compared to the Canon.

I also looked at images taken with higher ISO (simulating a low-light situation) from DC resources. Here I just looked at the images resized down to 1280x1024. The Sony W80 clearly looked better. At that size, there was an equal amount of detail in the images, but the Sony had much more pleasant color. At full zoom, however, it was true that the SD850 did better in fine detail (such as allowing you to read fine print that was obscured by the W80). But you'll never see those fine details unless you crop your photos or zoom in on detail when viewing them on your monitor.

Conclusion: the Sony W80 may be a better buy than the online reviews suggest.

Lighten your photos without blowing out the highlights

If you have a picture with really dramatic lighting differences (say half the image is in sunlight, and the other in shadow), then with normal tools it's very hard to make the dark part visible without ruining the bright part. What you need is a way to selectively brighten the darkest part of the image. The newer versions of PhotoShop have a tool for this, but if you don't have that, there is a free alternative that you can use online which may work even better:

shadowilluminator

Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX100

This $400 camera, like almost ever camera sold by Panasonic has image stabilization, but no optical view finder. Other important specs:

3.6X zoom lens, wide angle (28mm equiv), with quite blurry corners at wide angle

CIPA: 320 shots per charge.

size: 3.8 x 2.1 x 1.0 in. (0.2in longer than the SD850).

It looks like a reasonably nice camera, with a reasonable CIPA given it doesn't have a optical viewfinder. But like all the other wide angle cameras I've looked at, it has relatively poor optics at wide angle. Image stabilization is nice, but there are lots of other cameras which have this feature. Odly the camera doesn't support USB 2.0, so downloading all those 12 megapixel images is going to take forever.

DCRP review- mildly positive; they complain of high ISO noise, and the fact that it's kind of expense. Instead they suggest looking at a lower megapixel camera from Panasonic, such as the DMC-FX33 or DMC-FX55 instead.

Canon SD950 reviews

There are two new reviews of the SD850 from Canon.

PhotoBlog - positive review, with some good sample pix. They note that the biggest problem they saw was relatively high noise at ISO 400. The review has no discussion of edge blurriness or other lens distortion.


Steve's Digicams - positive review, but very short on details that can't be found in the press release. Steve claims minimal lens distortion and edge blurriness, but has no test pictures to back up his statement. Indeed, this real world shot from his review does show corner blurriness, though it's not an ideal shot to test for this.

Eliminate dead space in your photos

Here's a really cool online tool that lets you resize you photos by removing the repetitive or empty portions of the image - automatically! It's a lot of fun to play with and the resulting images look remarkably natural. You can also tell it to remove specific parts of the image as it resizes, which often doesn't look as natural, but still works remarkably well.

It's a flash program @ http://rsizr.com/

Fujifilm FinePix Z5fd

Lest you think I only follow Canon products, here is some info on a Fujifilm camera. Fujifilm has an interesting feature - they call it a "supperCCD", where super means super sensitive. The idea is that high ISO shots still look pretty good, in terms of noise level, reducing the need for image stabilization. How well does it work? Well, the camera does better than a typical compact at the same ISO, but from the test shots I have seen it does not appear to be as good as image stabilization in low light.

The Fujifilm FinePix Z5fd is much cheaper than the Canon cameras with IS, however - $165 at amazon. It's also 0.2in thiner than the SD850, at 3.6x2.2x0.8in. Compared to the SD850 the corner blur is much less at wide angle(compare 1 & 2), and the lens distortion is virtually nonexistent. But the deal breaker, for me, is that it has no optical viewfinder and the shots per charge (CIPA) is only 200. Canon's CIPA usually isn't much higher with LCD on, but will go up to 500 range with LCD off.

Here is Imaging Resource's review. Given the downsides to this camera I don't expect to collect more reviews.

A book for the Gimp

I've previously recommended the Gimp; a free alternative to PhotoShop that runs under most OSes. The only downside to the Gimp is it doesn't try to clone the PhotoShop interface, which means the learning curve is steeper than it could be. But there's a good book that can help with the learning curve, for much less than a copy of PhotoShop itself will set you back.

GIMP 2 for Photographers: $20 at amazon.

Book review here

Canon SD850 IS powershot - lowest safe price

It looks like the cheapest price for the SD850 is $280 (free shipping) from buy.com (you have to sign up for a credit card, for a $30 discount).

There are other sources, but all at suspiciously low prices which will likely evaporate if you don't purchase several high-prices accessories when they call you back to "confirm your order". You can always check epinions before you buy from a place with a too good to be true price - likely you'll find there is a reason why the price is $50 less than everybody else charges.

Sony W80 review

Imaging resources just finished a complete review of the Sony W80 camera. They feel the image quality stinks - lots of distortion in the lens, lots of blurring, and way too much noise reduction, resulting in soft images.

Disappointing, given what a bargain the W80 is going for right now ($150, if you sign up for a sony credit card).

Megapixels compared

So how much of a difference is there between a 2 megapixel image and a 5 megapixel image? A lot less than you might guess. This is because the number of pixels grows as the square of the dimensions of the image. For instance, a 2 megapixel image is 1600x1200; if you double each dimension to 3200x2400 you would then have a 8 megapixel image. But do you really need an 8 megapixel image?

Keep in mind that your home LCD is unlikely to display even a 2 megapixel image at full resolution - a common LCD size is 1280x1024. A common widescreen form factor is 1680x1050, which is still too small to show a 2 megapixel image unless you crop or squash the image. If the image is any larger than your LCD's maximum resolution, the image will have to be re-sampled down to the LCD's native resolution before display.

That said, display technology is getting better. Today's high end LCD will likely be the common size in a few years. So to future proof your pictures in terms of monitor display, might you want to shoot higher than 2 megapixels? For instance, a $1500 LCD monitor usually can display 1920 x 1200. Again, unless you crop, that's still just big enough for a 2 megapixel image.

The only real argument for shooting higher than 2 mega pixels, then, is if you engage in one of two practices: cropping your photos after you take them, or printing your photos.

For printing, you could argue that the more pixels the better, but here again current technology doesn't take advantage of all those pixels. For instance, 4 megapixels is enough to print a 8.5 inch by 11 inch photo a 200 DPI. That's a pretty high resolution photo at a pretty large size. Only if you want a huge, wall mounted photo will you really benefit from more megapixels. For cropping, of course, it is true that the larger the resolution the tighter you can crop final image. Of course, many of us never even get around to sorting our images, let alone cropping them.

Meanwhile the benefits from using fewer megapixels are quite measurable. You'll be able to fit more picture's in your camera's memory, your camera will likely require less delay between taking pictures, and you'll be able to fit a lot more photos onto a DVD when you make backups of your photo albums.

That's why I only rarely shoot at higher than 4 megapixels.

Here's a visual diagram that shows the relationship between the different megapixel sizes.

Powershot SD950 first review

ZDNet just posted a review of this camera. Like most ZDNet reviews it lacks the details that a camera centric site would have. In general they like the camera and recommend it, but they do highlight one notable issue: relatively high shutter lag (0.5s to 1.2s) and recycle time (2s). ZDNet's same tests ran on the SD850Is found a shutter lag of 05.s to 0.7s, and a recycle time of 1.7s.

Note that all of these times are at full resolution. Personally, I prefer to shoot at less than full size to get higher speed and less disk consumption.

Canon SD950, 870, and 850

Canon has some new cameras that might make the SD850 less appealing. Let's take a quick look (more details to come later).

The SD870, at least by name, seems like a straightforward upgrade to the SD850. Not true! It uses a wide-angle lens (presumably with the same distortion problems of the SD800), removes the optical view finder, and bumps the LCD up to 3in from 2.5in. Here's an early review from CNET that is lacking in detail. The lack of viewfinder really makes me lose interest.

More exciting is the SD950, which appears to be a more directly related upgrade to the SD850. Again, the lens is different, but with almost the same effective specs: 3.7x zoom, 36mm equivalent (ie not wide angle). Without any reviews it's unknown if this new lens has less corner blur, but we can hope.

Thankfully the 950 maintains the viewfinder. It's also slightly bigger: 3.8 x 2.4 x 1.1 in. Cipa is 240 images (LCD on, 580 if off) , a very slight bump. It also adds a battery level meter, something Canon should have come up with a long time ago. Amazon has it for preorder at 450; I'm not sure the specs bump warrant it over the 850. Hopefully this will push the 850 price down a bit, making it a really good buy.

More Canon SD850 IS

Here is another review of the SD850:

Good example pics of ISO noisiness and edge blurriness. (note, IXUS 950 IS is the SD850 in Europe).

Amazon still wants $309 for it & NewEgg wants sightly more. Sadly, its not clear that the price comparison places can really be believed when they quote lower prices - such as digital nerds, which says they will charge $230 for the camera. According to those same comparison sites, they are similar to many bait and switch vendors who call you up after the order is placed and up sell you accessories. If you refuse they then cancel your order. Note: I've never dealt with digital nerds, so I don't really know if this is their modus operandi; just that other customers have had that sort of experience.

Sony W80 vs Canon SD850IS: corner blur

Corner blur is a common problem in compact digital cameras. I decided to look at the W80 and the SD850 and compare the two.

The W80 has a smaller zoom lens (3x) and while it does have blurry corners, its not as bad as the SD850IS. Note that both cameras have the most problem with blurry corners at wide angle, with the SD850IS being particularly bad on the lower right, and the W80 having the hardest time at the lower left. Neither camera has much blurriness if you zoom in, but I take >50% of my photos at wide angle so this is a significant issue.

Check out these lab shots: W80 vs SD850IS. The W80 clearly wins.

But what about the real world? Check out this pair: W80 vs SD850IS

I would say that in the real-world shot the SD850, while worse, doesn't produce blurring that is that noticeable.

Canon SD850 IS powershot

The SD850IS ($308 at amazon) is an update of the SD700 IS. It's similar in many ways: optical image stabilization, 4x zoom lens, optical view finder, 2.5" LCD, and it even uses the same battery. It's also the same weight (165g) and size (3.6 x 2.2 x 1 in). The CIPA is slightly worse: 230 shots per charge, with the LCD on.

Pros relative to SD700:

* smart digital zoom if shooting at less than full 8 megapixel resolution (it uses cropping to simulate zoom, so there's no added blurring).

* one button ISO boost to reduce blur in low-light situations.

* Post-shot review mode where the center of the image is zoomed in full to show focus/blur/noise level of photograph.

Cons:

* blurry corners, just like the SD700 (but not as bad as in the SD800).

I'm a big fan of image stabilization, so I'm petty excited about this camera. It has been around for a while, but now that Canon has released couple of newer Cameras in the PowerShot line the price should start dropping.

very positive review with good real-world tests. Says the image quality is really good except for the blury corner issue (common to many compact cameras).

Another positive review Not as much detail, but still has some good test photos

How your camera detects color

The CCD (charged coupled device) is the light sensitive part of your digital camera. Like black and white film, the response of each element in the CCD depends only on how much light energy strikes that element. Thus, a bare CCD would only produce black and white images. To detect color, a patterned filter is placed in front of the CCD, which only allows red, green, or blue light to pass. Thus, each element in the CCD becomes sensitive to one of three colors. The final color for each pixel is determined by blending the response of each of the nearest CCD elements for each color, though exactly how this is done depends on your camera. There are two unavoidable downsides to all this: your images are made more blurry because each pixel is based on the response of multiple CCD elements, and because of the filter in front of the CCD, you don't detect all the light that hits the CCD (that is, your image is made more noisy in low-light situations).

For more info on this process, take a look at this page.

Kodak has designed a new color filter which tries to address the low-light problem, by sacrificing color resolution.

Picasa photo editing and viewing software

Picasa is a free photo organization program, currently developed by Google. Think of it as iPhoto for the PC.

It makes all of its edits non-destructively, which is great if you want to keep your original photos around and always view the modified versions in Picasa, but not so good if you want use multiple programs to work with your photo collection. The main reason I use it is that it makes generating web albums very easy, whether you are hosting the files on your own server, or on Google's server (Google gives you 1GB of space for free).

Photo Viewing software

I view my photos with IrfanView, a free but full featured program that offers the following features:

• Very quick to load,
• Delete photos with 'delete' key
• Browse between photos with left/right keys
• Rotate photos (using JPG EXIF flags) using hotkey
• Full screen view with smoothed resampling.
• Plus lots of other features I almost never need.
• Thumbnail mode (but I prefer ZoomBrowserEX for that)
• Hotkey to rename file.
  
• No ads/malware.
  

There are lots of photo viewing programs, but IrfanView is my favorite because it's full featured without being bloated.

Sony W80 reviews

In light of the low price on this camera I've started collecting reviews.

Pros: image stabilization, view finder, orientation sensor
Cons: new menu structure is a bit confusing and slow, if you turn off the LCD then there is no post-shot review option, unlike in canon cameras.

Limited review with lots of spec oriented test shots.

Full review with lots of real-world tests - concludes that camera's image quality isn't up to par.

Brief review - Cnet does not manage to say much, but they do like the camera.

More to come.

Sony W80 + 2gb memory stick + case for $154

Sony has a credit card sign-up incentive - spend $300 and get $150 back if you qualify for a Sony visa. Using this deal you can get a Sony W80 + a 2gb memory stick + case (or whatever accessories you wish that cost about $70) for just $154. For comparison, J&R is selling the camera for $230, without any memory stick. So if you can stand to sign up for a new credit card, it's a pretty good deal on a W80. I expect you could do the same deal with other cameras that Sony sells as well.

Canon ZoomBrowser

If you have a Canon camera, it's worth getting the newest version of ZoomBrowser EX (5.8b); the 5.8 series adds a very good "zoom" view which is a bit like the Windows Explorer thumbnail view except that you can scale the thumbnails up as big as you want. This makes it really easy to pick between duplicate shots taken at different exposures, etc. ZoomBrowser is a nice piece of software, for being free (for Canon users).

Digital photo manipulation software - not Photoshop!

If you don't have PhotoShop, an equally powerful program in most ways is The Gimp. The interface is rather different from PhotoShop, but if you don't use PhotoShop that's fine, right? The Gimp is free, and doesn't have any adware/malware. I have a copy on most of my computers.

Digital noise reduction

If you regularly shoot pictures in low-light you either have to use a flash, which distorts color badly in my experience, or shoot at a high ISO level. For a digital camera, high ISO really just means keeping the shutter open for a shorter period of time. This results in a noisy image because the CCD is a noisy image capture device (particularly when warm) and when you capture less light the camera has to turn the gain up more on the final image. The gain turns up the image, and also the noise. All cameras have algorithms to reduce noise, but since the camera has limited processing power, there is only so much improvement these algorithms can make. Post processing software on your PC can do a better job. One free/mostly functional demo program is Neat Image. It takes a bit of work to use it, but for important pictures it can really reduce the apparent noise without making your images look that much more blurry.

Canon PowerShot SD 800

Canon's 2nd compact powershot with image stabilization, an update of the SD700. Slightly lighter but same size. Features a wide-angle zoom with a 3.8x range.

Pros: Wide angle lens. Slightly improved battery life. Portrait mode which focuses on faces. After tacking picture camera shows full picture with zoomed inset to let you check focus.

Cons: Noticeable edge blurriness at wide zoom angle ( a bit worse than the SD700).

Reviews:

http://www.dcresource.com/ - Excellent review with lots of real world tests, including ISO and nightshot tests.

http://www.kenrockwell.com/canon/sd800.htm - nice review that focuses on usability and real world photos

http://www.imaging-resource.com/ - Spec oriented review but with lots of good detail

http://www.steves-digicams.com/- Some sample pics and good details about the menus

As of 9-2007 it looks like it goes for about $300 from reputable vendors.

Canon PowerShot 700

Canon's first compact powershot with image stabilization. About the same size as the SD110.

Pros: image stabilization, 4x zoom.

Cons: slightly blurry corners at wide zoom (example). Somewhat short battery life (CIPA 240).

Reviews:

DP Review

Imaging-Resource

DigitalCameraTracker

Photoxels

TrustedReviews - interesting sample pictures but otherwise poorly written.

Good Camera review websites

DP Review.com - spec oriented, with lots of somewhat artificial test, but lots of good details

DC Resource.com - fewer specs, but good real-world tests. Conclusions and suggestions seem well grounded.

Steves-Digicams.com - few specs, some good real-world tests, but not as good as DC Resources. Conclusions sometimes seem a bit more positive then is warranted.